Takayasu arteritis in pregnancy: A case series

Takayasu arteritis is a disease of unknown etiology which is a primary systemic vasculitis leading to stenotic and occlusive changes. Takayasu arteritis is a chronic inflammatory disease in progressive pattern which chiefly affects the aorta and its main branches. The diagnosis of the disease is mainly based on the clinical suspicion, history, physical examination and vascular imaging. We present here three cases of takayasu arteritis in pregnancy that were treated at our institute in the last 5 years. 1st case had complications like severe preeclampsia, abruption, temporary loss of vision, and intra uterine death of fetus. In 2nd case there was brain sparing effect of fetus, but other than that she did not have any other complications and neonatal outcome was also good without any neonatal complications. In the 3rd case antenatal and postnatal periods were uneventful and with good neonatal outcome. Pregnancy with takayasu arteritis needs to be timely diagnosed and treated for best maternal and fetal outcome

Experimental evidence of non-Amontons behaviour at a multicontact interface

We report on normal stress field measurements at the multicontact interface between a rough elastomeric film and a smooth glass sphere under normal load, using an original MEMS-based stress sensing device. These measurements are compared to Finite Elements Method calculations with boundary conditions obeying locally Amontons' rigid-plastic-like friction law with a uniform friction coefficient. In dry contact conditions, significant deviations are observed which decrease with increasing load. In lubricated conditions, the measured profile recovers almost perfectly the predicted profile. These results are interpreted as a consequence of the finite compliance of the multicontact interface, a mechanism which is not taken into account in Amontons' law

Butyrate Enhances Disease Resistance of Chickens by Inducing Antimicrobial Host Defense Peptide Gene Expression

Host defense peptides (HDPs) constitute a large group of natural broad-spectrum antimicrobials and an important first line of immunity in virtually all forms of life. Specific augmentation of synthesis of endogenous HDPs may represent a promising antibiotic-alternative approach to disease control. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that exogenous administration of butyrate, a major type of short-chain fatty acids derived from bacterial fermentation of undigested dietary fiber, is capable of inducing HDPs and enhancing disease resistance in chickens. We have found that butyrate is a potent inducer of several, but not all, chicken HDPs in HD11 macrophages as well as in primary monocytes, bone marrow cells, and jejuna and cecal explants. In addition, butyrate treatment enhanced the antibacterial activity of chicken monocytes against Salmonella enteritidis, with a minimum impact on inflammatory cytokine production, phagocytosis, and oxidative burst capacities of the cells. Furthermore, feed supplementation with 0.1% butyrate led to a significant increase in HDP gene expression in the intestinal tract of chickens. More importantly, such a feeding strategy resulted in a nearly 10-fold reduction in the bacterial titer in the cecum following experimental infections with S. enteritidis. Collectively, the results indicated that butyrate-induced synthesis of endogenous HDPs is a phylogenetically conserved mechanism of innate host defense shared by mammals and aves, and that dietary supplementation of butyrate has potential for further development as a convenient antibiotic-alternative strategy to enhance host innate immunity and disease resistance

Hierarchical colour image segmentation by leveraging RGB channels independently

In this paper, we introduce a hierarchical colour image segmentation based on cuboid partitioning using simple statistical features of the pixel intensities in the RGB channels. Estimating the difference between any two colours is a challenging task. As most of the colour models are not perceptually uniform, investigation of an alternative strategy is highly demanding. To address this issue, for our proposed technique, we present a new concept for colour distance measure based on the inconsistency of pixel intensities of an image which is more compliant to human perception. Constructing a reliable set of superpixels from an image is fundamental for further merging. As cuboid partitioning is a superior candidate to produce superpixels, we use the agglomerative merging to yield the final segmentation results exploiting the outcome of our proposed cuboid partitioning. The proposed cuboid segmentation based algorithm significantly outperforms not only the quadtree-based segmentation but also existing state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms in terms of quality of segmentation for the benchmark datasets used in image segmentation. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Reduced repair of 8-hydroxyguanine in the human breast cancer cell line, HCC1937

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women in the United States. Although the causes of this disease are incompletely understood, oxidative DNA damage is presumed to play a critical role in breast carcinogenesis. A common oxidatively induced DNA lesion is 8-hydroxyguanine (8-OH-Gua), which has been implicated in carcinogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of HCC1937 and MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines to repair 8-OH-Gua relative to a nonmalignant human mammary epithelial cell line, AG11134. METHODS: We used oligonucleotide incision assay to analyze the ability of the two breast cancer cell lines to incise 8-OH-Gua relative to the control cell line. Liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) was used to measure the levels of 8-OH-Gua as its nucleoside, 8-OH-dG in the cell lines after exposure to H(2)O(2 )followed by 30 min repair period. Protein expression levels were determined by Western blot analysis, while the hOGG1 mRNA levels were analyzed by RT-PCR. Complementation of hOGG1 activity in HCC1937 cells was assessed by addition of the purified protein in the incision assay, and in vivo by transfection of pFlagCMV-4-hOGG1. Clonogenic survival assay was used to determine sensitivity after H(2)O(2)-mediated oxidative stress. RESULTS: We show that the HCC1937 breast cancer cells have diminished ability to incise 8-OH-Gua and they accumulate higher levels of 8-OH-dG in the nuclear genome after H(2)O(2 )treatment despite a 30 min repair period when compared to the nonmalignant mammary cells. The defective incision of 8-OH-Gua was consistent with expression of undetectable amounts of hOGG1 in HCC1937 cells. The reduced incision activity was significantly stimulated by addition of purified hOGG1. Furthermore, transfection of pFlagCMV-4-hOGG1 in HCC1937 cells resulted in enhanced incision of 8-OH-Gua. HCC1937 cells are more sensitive to high levels of H(2)O(2 )and have up-regulated SOD1 and SOD2. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence for inefficient repair of 8-OH-Gua in HCC1937 breast cancer cell line and directly implicates hOGG1 in this defect

Association of decreased mitochondrial DNA content with ovarian cancer progression

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content in ovarian carcinomas was assessed by quantitative PCR. Results show that mtDNA content in tumour cell was significantly higher than that in normal ovary. Change in mtDNA content was not related with patients' age or tumour stages. However, the average mtDNA copy number in pathological low-grade tumours was over two-fold higher than that in high-grade carcinomas (P=0.012). Moreover, type I carcinomas also had a significantly higher mtDNA copy number than in type II carcinomas (P=0.019). Change in mtDNA content might be an important genetic event in the progression of ovarian carcinomas